Séminaire de philosophie : The Cognitive Uses of Causal Order

Four lectures by Prof. Michael Strevens (New York University):
What is the significance of our representation of the world as objectively causally ordered? One way to answer this question is to give a metaphysical theory of causation—to say what it is for the world to be causally ordered, independently of us. My method in this seminar is different: it is to investigate the role of causal thinking in scientific inquiry, under two headings:
1. What benefit do we gain from representing the world as a causal place? (Lectures 1 & 2)
2. How is causation built into the very nature of scientific inquiry? (Lectures 3 & 4)Bibliography:
• Strevens, M. “Why represent causal relations?”, in Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy, Computation, A. Gopnik & L. Schulz, eds. Oxford University Press, New York, 2007.
• Strevens, M. “Physically contingent laws and counterfactual support”, Philosopher’s Imprint, 8(8), 2008.
• Bennett, J. A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.
• Strevens, M. “Ceteris paribus: Causal Voodoo that Works”, manuscript available at http://www.strevens.org/research/lawmech/cpmech.shtml.

Ressources en ligne

Why think causally? (le 4 mai 2010) — Michael Strevens(conférence non enregistrée, mais document d’accompagnement disponible)
What advantage is there, in everyday cognition, to thinking of the world causally? Even if the world is causally ordered in some objective sense, why devote cognitive resources to representing this order rather than representing, say, only statistical regularities?